A Ferguson Town Hall -- In Which the Mayor is Skewered Six Ways From Sunday

Ferguson, MO town hall audience -- Credit Durrie Bouscaren, St. Louis Public Radio

The audio is embedded in this link: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/fergusons-mayor-faces-heat-forum-dissects-citys-divisions

It runs close to two hours, and some of it is very powerful. There are at least two Fergusons, the "black side" and the "white side," and the mayor is clearly nearly oblivious to the presence of the "black side" -- apart from his ability to bamboozle and screw its residents through those ever useful and productive fees, fines and forfeitures. He claims he's never had a problem with (his) negroes, but then what plantation owner ever did? At least they never did before the slave revolt.

Ferguson has had a mini slave revolt, and the white owners are trying desperately to figure out how to keep the idea from spreading. They send down Jesse Jackson and The Reverend Al to calm the negroes. They place negro overseers to ensure the pacification of the... well... savages.

Let's be clear.

From the evidence in this recording and from the many other recordings of incidents in Ferguson, it's clear that the owners (including the mayor as their agent) regard the colored folks as little more than exploitable resources, crops as it were, to be punished severely when they get out of line, to be mostly ignored otherwise. They are not human, they are not people. But they are "savages."

That's why we saw such sick, sick and ridiculous force being applied to control them starting within minutes of Michael Brown's execution when the St. Louis County police arrived with dogs and assault weapons at the ready to keep the crowds gathered on Canfield Drive "under control." They had the dogs out within minutes.

As many people at the town hall pointed out, the police were inciting  the crowds from the outset, and they kept right on doing it, over and over and over again, and their incitement was a direct cause of the people's anger and upset. Could the mayor even begin to understand that? No, he could not. If the police were over-reacting, it wasn't his police.  No, no, no, you negroes have to understand that his police were pulled off the streets -- except at the police station -- within a day or so of the "incident" and the police who were on the streets during the "disturbances" were St. Louis County and State Highway Patrol and all sorts of municipal police forces from around the area. They weren't Ferguson police. So, no harm no foul, right?

Where was the mayor during all this? Nobody saw him. Oh, he was at the police station sometimes; otherwise he was at home. Why? He talked to lots of constituents. He will not resign in disgrace. He has no control over the police chief and cannot hire or fire one, only the city manager can do that. The city manager has not been instructed to do that, and he probably won't be.

No one mentioned Darren Wilson and how the city is protecting him.

Strange.

Even stranger, the fact that almost all the audience for this town hall (at least initially) was... white. See the picture above.

I guess that goes to show who doesn't listen to NPR.

On Guns And Slaves And Indians and Militias And Oh My!

The Gun Rights issue is getting very heated in parts of New Mexico, and much of it is getting stupider by the minute. There was someone on the teevee the other day pontificating about how horrid the tyrannical Obama background check will be -- because it'll keep the "good people" from getting guns, you see, and then only the "bad people" will have them, eek. We're doomed. Again.

The Single Action Shooting Society people are pressing the locals to let them run their Shooting Ranch year round and open to the public instead of just members and guests, and the locals are up in arms about it (in a manner of speaking) given that the shooting events they hold at the Ranch as it is have raised something of a ruckus what with the constant pow-pow-pow of gunfire and the traffic and the costumed Wild West Characters and all the rest of it. It's a big deal, this Gun Thing.

In fact, on the way into town (Abq) yesterday on the highway, I spotted a billboard I'd never seen before demanding that local, state and federal governments protect rather than curtail rights to free speech, religion ...and guns.

What a country.

Yes, and guns are a big deal around here. It's genuine cowboy country (well, there are some poseurs, but mostly the cowboys in these parts are real cowboys, not the ersatz you see in the City), and the Code of the West still lives proud and strong. I've never seen any problem with the SASS and their costuming and play acting and shoot-em-ups, because from what I can tell, they're self-aware and honest enough to know that what they do at the Ranch is in the nature of a show and a hobby. They aren't going out shooting up one another or the countryside.

Some of our neighbors are active game hunters, others have been in the habit of varmint hunting, for varmints can be a real problem around here (ask me about the skunks sometime). But as I've said before, most of the people around here are highly conscientious and responsible. There are probably some crazy gun-nuts among them, but if there are, they keep their profiles low.

I'm not into guns personally. But I don't begrudge most people who keep and fire arms -- so long as they are conscientious and responsible. Unfortunately not everyone is or can be, and it only takes one man (rarely a woman) with bad intent and a gun to cause utter mayhem.

Thom Hartmann raised quite a ruckus himself the other day with his piece at Truthout asserting that the Sacred Second's purpose was to preserve slavery by prohibiting the federal government from interfering with slave revolt suppressing militias. He's been called every name in the book for making this outrageous assertion, even though most of those expressing outrage and calling him "dishonest" acknowledge that he's "partially right."

Of course he is. But it goes a little farther than the preservation of the peculiar institution. Militias were also charged with running down the Indians and slaughtering them.

I've written before that the Sacred Second is derived from the English Bill of Rights imposed on William and Mary in 1689. In the English Bill of Rights it is specifically stated that the King's subjects "that are Protestant" shall have the right to keep and bear arms appropriate to their status. What is left unsaid is that the King's subjects that are Catholic are to be disarmed -- regardless of their status. Just so, the Sacred Second itself did not apply to slaves, to Indians not taxed, or to anyone else so deemed unworthy to keep and bear by the states. The armed militias were organized to suppress -- to murder if need be -- these groups, after all.

And in some ways, that's the reason why the Second is so Sacred. The right to keep and bear arms is the emblem of those with the ability and sometimes the authority to oppress, or in the USofA, the right of the Free Citizen, and taking it away, or even limiting it in any sensible way, is seen as reducing the status of the Citizen to that of subject or outcast or worse.

In other words, there the Rule of the Second requires that someone be disarmed.

The right to keep and bear arms was denied to large numbers of Americans from the beginning, and even now, it is not by any means a universal right (nor should it be in my view.)

But restricting it is a terrifying thing to many of those who believe their ability to have and keep firearms is a mark of their humanity and citizenship.

Take away their guns, or make it more difficult for them to get armaments, and you have reduced them to the status of subjects -- or slaves.